STUDENTS APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF INTERDEPENDENCE TO THE ISSUE OF PRESERVATION OF SPECIES - OBSERVATIONS ON THE ABILITY TO GENERALIZE

One of the aims of science education is that students should be able t o apply scientific principles to contemporary issues. Individual inter views were used to investigate the way in which students (63 12-year-o lds and 60 16-year-olds) applied the ecological concept of interdepend ence of species to the issue of preservation of species. Students were shown a list of items representing a range of living things and were asked to select those which they would want to save from extinction an d explain their reasoning. Although most students used the concept of interdependence for some items, they did not apply it in a scientifica lly consistent way to all types of living things. Three probable reaso ns for this lack of consistency were anthropocentricism, mixed reasons (students appeared to spontaneously choose another type of reason dep ending on what image the item immediately provoked), and opposite reas ons (students interpreted the idea of interdependence as applying to s ome types of living things but not to others).